


to the moon and to saturn

by gayprentiss



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Album: folklore (Taylor Swift), Angst, Childhood Friends, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Inspired by Taylor Swift, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:29:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25806658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayprentiss/pseuds/gayprentiss
Summary: spencer reid and sara harding were inseparable as children. when their paths cross again by chance, they must learn to navigate unspoken childhood feelings as adults.inspired by taylor swift's "folklore"
Relationships: Spencer Reid/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 32





	1. seven

**Author's Note:**

> there is a reader insert version of this posted on my tumblr @gayprentiss, if you'd prefer to read that version.

“you’re boring.” 

“no, i’m not, sara!” 

“you never want to play pirates with me!” 

spencer’s hair is long and his glasses are sliding down his nose. the light seeping into sara’s room from her large bay window is muted by the white sheet covering it. the sheet rests precariously over a chair, forming a blanket fort carefully engineered by spencer, and haphazardly constructed by sara. there are throw pillows tossed throughout the fort, and spencer makes an attempt to straighten them whenever he gets the chance. whenever he comes to sara’s house, ringing her doorbell with a backpack full of books, they work together to add on to their secret hideaway. the white sheet is the newest addition, especially designed to let more natural light into the blanket burg. this follows a poor mishap where a lamp sara had left on too long burnt a hole through her carpet.

previously, the pair had constructed a stuffed animal room, a reading corner, a designated snack area. sara’s starting to run out of linens. the fort has been standing for weeks now, sara’s parents very rarely involved enough to enter her room, giving her and spencer free reign to create their own imaginary worlds to play in undisturbed. 

except spencer, with all his practicality, isn’t particularly adept at the “playing in imaginary worlds” part. sara can’t comprehend that. it’s simple for her to slip into a different universe, enjoyable, even. she’s begged spencer to play mermaids, bank robbers, fbi agents, firefighters, princesses---you name it. spencer indulges her for the most part, but sara can always tell that he’s not that into it. he’s much fonder of tucking into some obscure poetry book, reading aloud when sara requests. she never comprehends much of what he’s saying, but he reads so confidently that it fills her with glee anyways. 

for seven year olds, it’s clear to outsiders that they both don’t quite act their age. sara, with her big blue doe eyes, dreams too much, her escapism both her greatest asset and most fatal flaw. spencer’s a stickler to the realistic, his pragmatic nature an unconscious choice that gives him a beautiful worldview but will make him grow up too fast. for now, though, the children don’t worry about that. they worry solely about balancing each other out and the purity that comes with being in youth. 

sara is splayed on her back on the floor of the fort, where her scratchy carpet is covered with a fluffy pink blanket. her black hair fans out around her head in a halo. spencer’s physics book is closed and set gently in the corner, and he’s attempting to braid a small chunk of sara’s hair. “pirates is my least favorite game,” he says. 

“what about knights?” sara angles herself to look back at him. she’s far too young to execute a soul searching gaze, but the way her eyes strain to scan his face comes close. she takes note of his facial expression giving away his inner thoughts. the way his lip quirks up indicates that he definitely _does not_ want to play knights with the girl in front of him, but the softness in his eyes tells sara that she’s won. 

without another word, they crawl out from their blanket fort and jump onto the bed. “my armor is blue,” sara says, unsheathing an imaginary sword and holding it up in joust.  
“knight armor was typically made of iron or steel, and there was no way to make it blue in the late 15th century,” spencer piped up, mirroring her actions. he likes playing at sara’s house. his parents would never let him jump on the bed. sara’s parents let the two of them do a lot of things, spencer thinks, and he’s never heard them fight like his parents do either. 

“cool, spencer!” sara says enthusiastically. she’s always enthusiastic when he tells her a fact, even though she rarely really understands him. she knows people are terrible to spencer because of his intellect, and had made a pact with herself when they first became friends that she would never ever ever be mean to spencer for being smart. “we can pretend, though. yours can be blue too!” 

“okay,” he replies, and sara begins to coach him through the game, attempting to loosen him up a bit. they play, bouncing around on the bed and wielding fake medieval weapons until the sun begins to go down and spencer remarks that he needs to go home before dark or his mom will be upset. 

sara reluctantly lets him leave, knowing that he has a lot less fun at his house, but finding comfort in the fact that he’ll come back the next day. 

spencer and sara spend every day together, without fail. they’re young, and they don’t know much about life, but they know that they’re the only people for each other. they’ve been inseparable since sara had toddled into spencer’s first grade class and heard him reciting a john lyngate poem. her favorite book at that time was a brightly colored picture book, so she was both fascinated and confused by the boy in glasses in front of her. that day, they’d sat together on the bus and chatted the whole way home. the pure elation that occurred when the children realized they shared the same bus stop was unmatched. sara, who’d just moved to las vegas, was relieved she’d met a friend in her new hometown.

she didn’t really meet any other friends after associating herself with spencer. he’d warned her that being his best friend was basically social suicide, but sara was already attached to him like superglue. once, a girl in their class had tried to invite sara to sit with her at lunch. the girl not-so-subtly made it clear that spencer was not invited to the table, and sara had shut that down quickly with a swift spoonful of red jell-o down her shirt. spencer decided then that red jell-o was his favorite. 

to sum it all up, in super simple terms, sara and spencer were close. and everyone in their town knew it, including their parents, although both sets of adults were generally nonplussed about what their children were involved in as long as they were alive and surviving. 

sara’s parents aren’t neglectful, per se. she’d just had to learn how to fend for herself very early on. sara’s existence had been an accident, and although she didn’t know that in explicit terms, it wasn’t hard to figure out based on the lack of maternal instincts from her mother. sara’s mother sat on the back porch of their house a lot, looking out at their tiny, barren backyard with a cigarette in hand. her father went away on many business trips, coming back to greet the family only with a pat on sara’s head before he padded up to the bedroom to slip into bed. one day, sara would realize the intensity of the mental health problems both of her parents were suffering from, but as a child, the adults in her life just felt far away. 

spencer’s parents were similar in a sense that they weren’t the best. rather than the silence that settled over sara’s house, his home filled with argument. it’s why he found solace with sara, with their blanket fort. sara’d offered to let him live with them constantly, but spencer couldn’t leave his mother. his father? he couldn’t care less. but his mother...as much as spencer longs to spend his days curled up in sara’s bed, reading, he knows above anything else, he’s got to protect his mother. 

after closing the door behind spencer, sara skips to the kitchen to pour herself a drink. her and spencer had made fresh lemonade the day before, squeezing lemons sara had stolen from her neighbor’s tree. spencer had been in charge of the sugar, and he’d added way too much. the pair tried it, though, and liked the super sweet taste. 

sara fills her glass with ice, having to stand on her tippy toes to reach it in the freezer. after the cup is filled with the sugary beverage, she takes a second to peer out of the window and check on her mom outside. sara expected to find her in her usual plastic chair, cloud of smoke encircling her. but she wasn’t there. this was odd. she sets her sweating glass down on the table, and wanders upstairs to get a location on her mother.

loud moans float down from the top of the stairs, and sara, ever naive, follows the sound to its source. the stairs creak under her feet, her house old and probably close to crumbling. sara pushes the door to her parents’ room open with both hands, and is immediately sick at the sight. at seven years old, she doesn’t fully understand what’s happening, but she knows that whatever she is seeing is wrong. 

william reid, spencer’s father, is laid naked next to her mother, also fully exposed. they’re startled by the door opening, shocked to see young sara standing there, witnessing their adultery. the three of them are in a trance, suspended in surprise. sara’s brain is moving a mile a minute, she knows, but she can’t seem to form any cohesive thoughts except _“this is not right.”_ it feels like forever that sara is holding eye contact with william before her mother speaks. “sara,” she starts, but sara doesn’t stick around to hear the end of the sentence. she’s out of the bedroom and out of the house in 30 seconds flat. 

as she runs down the suburban street, she’s barely aware of the tears rolling down her cheeks or the pain in her feet. she’d forgotten shoes. she runs, runs, runs, hair flowing behind her. she runs until her thoughts catch up to her. where can she go? she realizes that her body had been taking her straight to spencer’s house, but she _couldn’t_. how could she look him in the eye? how could she tell him that her own mother is responsible for his family falling apart? how could she ever even be near him again? stopping in the middle of the road, sara lets out an anguished scream. a ferocious scream. a scream that claws its way out of her chest. and then, sufficiently exhausted by both her physical activity and her emotional despair, she turns back the way she came and begins to trek back towards her house. 

\- - - - - -

“penny, i have no clue how you do your job,” sara says, handing the blonde woman before her a hot macchiato in a to-go cup. 

her hair is longer now, her eyes more weary. the wonder she felt as a child is long gone, sucked out of her on that fateful night. sara hardly thinks about it anymore, but that night after she had gone home, her mother made her pack her bags and took her as far away from vegas as possible. as far away from _spencer_ as possible. she never saw him again. it’s been almost twenty years since she’d last seen the geeky boy. the loss of her childhood best friend was a dull wound now, one tucked safely in the back of her subconscious. sometimes she wonders how he turned out, but their time together feels more like a dream than a memory. 

sara moved away from her parents as soon as she turned 18, straight to washington d.c.. with no money, no degree, no friends or family, sara turned to her work. she got a job in a tiny coffee shop, and the elderly lady who owned it took her under her wing. her name was janice, and she was an old, childless widow. sara’s kind disposition filled a void janice had given up on trying to fill, and the two became a fierce pair. janice provided sara with the apartment above the shop, higher-than-minimum wage, and when janice passed five years later, sara inherited the coffee shop itself. she’d been owning and running it ever since. 

it was at this shop that she met penelope garcia. penelope frequented the kitschy coffee place before work, and had gained quite the soft spot for the raven-haired owner. the two of them chatted every morning as sara flitted around behind the counter, making whatever caffeine-filled concoction penelope had ordered. eventually, their friendship progressed past casual small talk at sara’s work into wine-filled sleepover nights at their apartments. 

“my job is hard, my friend,” penelope replies, shuddering. “some of the stuff i see gives me the heebie jeebies.” 

“yeah, like dead bodies.” sara turns and begins making her own personal coffee to start the day, penelope leaning on the counter in front of her. “heebie jeebies is an understatement!” sara faces penelope again and grins, pouring copious amounts of sugar into a mug that janice had used while running the café.

“you know, sara, i only know one other person in the world that takes that much sugar in their coffee,” penelope remarks while she watches the barista stir her obscenely sweet coffee with a wooden stirrer. 

“hmm, they must be my soulmate, then,” sara says. penelope’s ears perk up at that. she makes her way to the door, and sara raises her mug in lieu of a wave. “have fun at work, pen! see you at your place tonight! i’ll bring wine!” penelope responds with a witty goodbye and heads to work, just the jingle of the bells on the door to signify she was ever there.

\-----

penelope saunters into the behavioral analysis unit office 30 minutes later, cup of coffee long empty. “good morning, babygirl,” derek says. 

“i’ll show you a good morning, hot stuff,” penelope deadpans, walking through the bullpen to greet all of her coworkers. penelope’s so bright that she immediately lights up the dreary BAU. 

“spencer!” she calls, prompting the shaggy haired doctor to look up from his desk. 

“good morning, garcia,” he says with a small wave. 

“this morning, i got coffee at my favorite place,” penelope begins to gush, “and the barista puts just as much sugar in her coffee as you do!” 

spencer doesn't understand why garcia is telling him this until she continues. 

“this particular barista happens to be super cute and also one of my closest friends.” 

spencer shakes his head with a laugh. “no, garcia, i’m not letting you set me up again.”

“okay, the first one was not good, i’ll admit.” she perches on the edge of his desk. 

“but i actually _know_ this girl! and i love her!” 

spencer shakes his head again, giving penelope a light, joking push off of her seat. “no,” he emphasizes, and garcia gives him a dramatic sigh.

“okay,” she says, dragging out the word. “i’m going to go to my lair now to give you time to 

think about it.” she presses a kiss to the top of his head, and with a ruffle of his hair, she floats to her office. 

_i’ll convince him_ , she thinks. _i mean, how could i not? coffee aside, the kids are perfect for each other._ she doesn’t know how she missed the blatant similarities between them. penelope’s usually very perceptive, and that makes her really good at setting people up. _i might as well be cupid,_ she thinks, _except for that one date i’d sent spencer on._ she chooses to ignore that one. a minor lapse in judgement. 

penelope pulls out her phone to text sara. 

**penelope** _(7:56)_ : sara, my love, my light, i have found the most perfect guy for you 

**sara** _(7:57)_ : no penny, not again 

**sara** _(7:57)_ : remember the last date you set me up on? 

oh yeah, penelope remembers. she’d sent both of her friends on two completely separate, shitty dates. maybe cupid wasn’t the best nickname for her. 

**penelope** _(7:59)_ : you’re right. ugh. ix-nay on that idea then 

she attaches a lot of sad emojis, then tucks her phone away. there goes that. penelope tucks that idea away, into the depths of her brain, and forgets about it. 

  
  
  



	2. betty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "but if i just showed up at your party, would you have me, would you want me?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is a reader insert version of this posted on my tumblr @gayprentiss, if you'd prefer to read that version.

spencer has a recurring dream about her. in this dream, it’s sara’s 18th birthday. his brain doesn’t know what she looks like past age seven, so dream-sara has her youthful face on a tall, gangly body. her cheeks are tinted pink from the sun, and her eyes crinkle at the edges when she smiles. she’s holding a birthday cake that’s covered in lit candles. there’s no indication that spencer baked the pink, sloppily-frosted cake, but in his dream, he knows he did. 

she holds the cake out towards him. “make a wish, spencer,” she says, her voice sounding far away and warbled. 

“it’s not my birthday, love,” he insists, swiping some of the frosting and brushing it across her cheek. 

she grins and sets the cake down on the round table in front of her. “sure, but i want to share mine with you.” she pulls out a box, gift wrapped in bright yellow paper with a large blue bow on top. he always wakes up before he can ever open it. 

he gets this dream once a month without fail. it’s pathetic, he thinks. he hasn’t even seen sara in twenty years. he’s doesn’t even know her, to be frank. and yet he thinks about her constantly. he---and his therapist, of course---chalk this up to the abandonment he felt when she never came back. she didn’t even say goodbye. spencer thinks about this often, wondering if it was his fault. he wonders if any or all of the horrible things he’s been through have been his fault. his sick brain tells him yes, yes they are. 

often, when spencer thinks of sara, he imagines her in some incredible life. a spy, maybe. he knows it’s unlikely that she’s a princess or bank robber now, but he doesn’t put it past her. he doesn’t have enough memories of her, so every play-pretend game they played as children supplements what he knows about her, creating at least some whole adult person for him to fantasize about. she’s become almost a fictional character in the movie of his life. he wishes that they weren’t estranged, wishes that he could know the real sara instead of whatever caricature of her he’s created. even if she actually  _ was  _ a bank robber. he just wants to know.

wait. he just wants to know. 

spencer’s lounged on his couch, cardigan long tossed aside, tie long undone. he’s been home from work for a few hours now, an easy paperwork day cutting his day short. he takes half of a second to make his decision, then pulls out his phone. 

\------

“i need you to look someone up for me,” sara says nonchalantly, flicking through a cheesy magazine. they’re laying on penelope’s bed, tv in the other room playing a rerun episode of “the office” just loud enough for them to hear. penelope has one hand in a bowl of popcorn, and one on her laptop scrolling mindlessly through some geeky website sara can’t comprehend. 

sara had seen spencer that evening on her way to penelope’s house. at least she thought she did. sara was stopped at a red light, staring straight ahead at the crosswalk before her. living in a decently populated city, there were always fun characters crossing the street, and while sara had once been in awe of the medley of people living in dc, she’d become used to it, and stopped paying attention. at red lights, she usually takes time to relax, letting her eyes glaze over before the switch to green and the restart of traffic. but before she could check out for her 15 seconds of a mental break, she saw a long haired figure hunched over a book, crossing the street directly in front of her car. 

granted, sara hasn’t seen spencer in twenty years. she has no  _ clue  _ what he looks like nowadays, but everything from his ray bradbury book to his lanky frame to his beat up converse was familiar. her eyes clung to him, desperate to catch a glimpse of his face, but it never came. and sara felt like she was going crazy. of all the places in the world, there’s no way that spencer reid’s life path had taken him all the way from nevada to the exact same city she lived in.

but she didn’t have to wonder, or anxiously await the next time she saw the man by chance, because her best friend was a techy genius and no one could hide from her. sara decided then, at that red light, that she’d ask penelope to find spencer, something she couldn’t even picture herself wanting just thirty seconds earlier. 

sara’s attempt at casually bringing the topic up is futile, because a.) penelope garcia is a very nosy woman, and b.)....penelope garcia is a very nosy woman. in all of the best ways. “who?” she inquires excitedly, halting all motion that could distract her from this  _ very important  _ conversation. 

“it’s kind of a long story,” sara says, closing her magazine and sitting up. she crosses her legs, a seating pose that indicates that she’s devoting everything to explaining this to penelope. “so, when i was really little, there was this boy…” 

and the suspense is  _ killing  _ penelope. sara’s launched into this whole story about blanket forts, and being young, and blah blah blah whatever, but she’s not giving up her male protagonist’s  _ name.  _ penelope has her hands poised at her keyboard, ready to give sara a location, occupation, and criminal record in less than 30 seconds, but she just needs to know his name. sara talks, and talks, and talks, and penelope, as the good friend and listener she is, doesn’t interrupt once except to ask a question. 

(“so _your_ mom was sleeping with _his_ dad?”

yes! my own mother! i know, right?”)

  
  


sara’s oblivious to the fact that penelope is on the edge of her seat, hanging on her every single word, just waiting, waiting,  _ agonizingly _ waiting for a name. 

“once, i even put jell-o down a girl’s shirt for this kid,” sara laughs. “it was cherry flavored, i’ll never forget. my first badass moment.” she stops her story with a shared chuckle, and a silence settles over the two women for a moment. 

“so, did you want me to find this prince charming, or…” penelope waggles her fingers over her keyboard as to emphasize her point.

“oh! yeah! his name is-----” 

penelope’s phone rings, and they let out a frustrated groan in unison. sara flops back into her laying down position, knowing that when penelope’s phone rings, it almost never bodes well for wine nights. 

\----------

“garcia!” spencer greets as soon as she answers.

“as much as i’m excited to hear from my favorite doctor-profiler-boy-genius, i wonder to what do i owe this pleasure?” penelope glances over at sara, who has already found her way back into her cosmopolitan magazine. 

“hey, i was wondering if you could look someone up for me. i know technically it’s not ethical but---” 

“do you have a name for me, wonder boy?” penelope asks. she’s not waiting a second longer for him to spill, lest she gets trapped in yet another long-winded backstory. 

“uh, yeah. sara harding. she---,” spencer speaks, and is immediately transferred to hold, with a short and excited “wait!” from garcia. sure, she feels bad for cutting him off twice now during the short span of their phone call, but  _ this?  _ this is major. 

“sara, tell me his name is spencer reid,” penelope says, voice coming out rushed and full of eagerness. 

sara’s eyes go wide. penelope was really good at her job. she got his name just from her little jell-o story? “yeah, it is, pen!” sara laughs. “what’s he up to these days?”

penelope covers the receiver of her phone even though spencer was on hold and couldn’t hear her anyways. “he’s on the phone with me! we work together! we’re like, super close!  _ sara! _ ” penelope is emphasizing her words with crazy hand gestures, the clinking of her bracelets serving as enthusiastic punctuation. 

sara doesn’t really know how to respond to this information. “he’s FBI?” she asks, stupidly. 

“that is so far beyond the point!” penelope exclaims. “he’s the guy i was texting 

you about earlier today, the one i wanted to set you up with!”

sara, with a big goofy grin on her face, tosses a piece of popcorn at her head, watching as it gets stuck in one of her ponytails. “take him off of hold, penny!” excitement courses through her veins. she  _ had  _ seen him earlier. what are the odds?

spencer paces anxiously in his apartment. she’d dead. sara is dead, and garcia’s trying to find the best way to tell him. that’s why she put him on hold, he knows. there’s a crackle in the phone, and garcia’s voice rings through the speaker. “spencer?” she asks, making sure he’s still on the line. there’s giggling on her end, pulling him to the conclusion that whatever garcia was about to say, at least sara’s not dead. 

“yeah, garcia?” spencer says, too on edge to say more than a few words at a time. 

“i’ve got probably a million and one things to tell you about a certain sara harding,” garcia says, voice mischievous. on her end, there’s a squawk of protest followed by some shuffling. spencer waits patiently, and then garcia’s voice is back. “i’ve got her right here with me, actually.” 

spencer, overwhelmed with nerves, hangs up immediately. 

“he hung up!” penelope screams, and the two women burst into laughter. penelope’s hunched over at her laptop, cackling.

“i can’t believe he hung up,” sara says through her fit of giggles.

“you _ have  _ to come to our work get-together this weekend and see him, sara. spencer’s hosting!” penelope says.

“he clearly doesn’t want to talk to me,” sara says jokingly, and they laugh again. not at the boy, but at the scenario. “also, no! no ‘get-togethers.’ you know i don’t do parties.” 

\------

sara’s on her way to the party. it took all of 15 seconds for penelope to convince her to be her plus-one. all she had to do is say the words “casual” and “wine” and sara was in. she tried to ignore the fact that it would just be penelope’s coworkers, one of them being her estranged best friend, and her. at spencer’s apartment, nonetheless. it was bound to be awkward, but sara tried to focus less on that and more on how excited penelope was to introduce her to spencer. re-introduce her, rather. 

penelope offered to drive sara to alleviate some of her nerves, and sara accepted graciously. neither one of them had talked about spencer since the phone call, except for penelope casually mentioning that spencer hadn’t brought up sara to her at work at all. they’d all spent the week in limbo, then. the drive to spencer’s apartment is generally silent, penelope jumping in with words of affirmation every so often, if not to calm sara then just to make her laugh. sara’s leg bounces as she looks out of the window of penelope’s car. 

when they arrive, after penelope’s parked, she turns to sara. “sara. you are colorful, beautiful, perfect, and every other nice word i can think of. everything will be fine. but if, by some odd, unpredictable chance, everything is  _ not  _ fine, say the word and we will be out of there faster than you can say ‘penny.’” sara pulls her into a tight hug, and penelope can feel her heart beating.

“what if he just tells me to, like, fuck off?” sara murmurs.

“reid would never. he could never,” penelope says. with that reassurance, they get out of her car and head up to the party. 

\-------

sara stares at spencer’s front door as penelope knocks. the paint on it is chipping, she notes. spencer swings open the door and hoots erupt through the apartment.   
“garcia’s here!”

“hey, garcia!”

“babygirl!”

everyone’s calling for her, so she snakes past spencer and into his home with a pat on his chest. he’s stuck in the doorway and sara’s stuck in the hall. neither of them know what to say to each other, so they’re sticking to intense eye contact and nervous foot shuffling. sara’s here, at his apartment. he’s shocked. she’s real, she’s here, and here is  _ his _ apartment. 

“you look the same,” they say at the same time, and then, at the absurdity of the situation, they laugh together. sara, feeling empowered by the diffusion of the tension, wraps her arms around him in a hug. he’s broad, she notes. he hugs her tightly, holding on a second too long as compensation for the fact that he’d never know when their last hug had been their last. 

“come in, come in,” spencer says. as he’s ushering her inside, hand against her lower back, he speaks again. sara’s acutely aware of his coworkers eyes on her, but she’s distracted by his voice. “did you know that we begin to forget childhood memories while we’re in childhood still? younger children remember 60 percent of early life events, and that goes down by 20 percent in just a year or two.” 

“hmm, so it’s weird that you remember me, then?” sara teases as he hands her a glass of white wine.

“well, i don’t, really,” he admits, and sara hums in agreement against the rim of her drink. 

penelope calls sara over to where she’s sitting and introduces her to the team. sara takes notes. penelope never really combines her work and her play, telling sara it’s to keep her safe, so sara revels in this insight into her best friend’s life. 

jj, the pretty blonde, seems to be the glue of the group, sara judges. emily’s guarded, but fun, and sara sees a lot of herself in her. derek is penelope’s favorite, sara knows, and it’s not hard to figure out why. he’s attractive, but more than that, he’s charismatic and intelligent. sara can’t get a good read on hotch, but she likes him well enough. rossi’s her favorite, though, his laidback, cool demeanor just mysterious enough to pique her curiosity. sara greets everyone with a warm hello and a short introduction, and finds her place at penelope’s side.

she’s out of place for sure, but the team tries their hardest to include her. they’ve got great chemistry as a group, and sara wins their favor when she cracks a dry joke that gets everyone laughing. she can feel spencer’s eyes on her the whole night, but she doesn’t indulge him by looking back. she’s too nervous. he keeps her glass filled all night, a gracious host, and when she thanks him each time he gives her a shaky smile. he’s nervous too, she realizes. 

when people start filtering out, sara realizes she’d hardly spoken to spencer all night, save for some light small talk with others. she’d really like to get him alone, but she doesn’t want to overstep. spencer looks at her intently when she stands to leave with garcia. he wants to get her alone, but he doesn’t want to overstep.  _ be bold, spencer, _ he thinks.  _ it’s just sara. _ but it’s not just sara anymore. they aren’t kids anymore, blindly bonded to one another out of convenience. there’s nothing tying them together anymore except for some flimsy memories, and this scares spencer. sara’s also insanely beautiful. this adds to his nerves. it’s not too often he has a pretty girl in his apartment alone. 

“you can stay longer if you want, sara. i’ll drive you home,” spencer says, his words surprising even himself. his eyebrows furrow and sara wants to smooth the crease in his forehead with her thumb. 

“okay,” she says softly, turning to penelope. “i’ll see you tomorrow, pen?” they embrace, and penelope says her bright goodbyes. when she leaves, sara leans against the closed front door, staring at spencer expectantly. 

“do you want another drink?” he asks her, unsure of what to do with his hands. 

“no, i think i’m sufficiently tipsy-adjacent,” sara jokes, placing her hands decidedly on spencer’s shoulders. “i think you and me should talk.” 

“yeah,” spencer replies, his amber eyes searching hers. “we can sit outside.” he leads her to his balcony, and takes a seat on his outdoor couch. 

“it looks like it might rain,” sara says lamely, sitting next to him, close enough for their thighs to touch.

“did you know women are more likely to give a man their phone number on a sunny day rather than a cloudy one? there’s only a 14% success rate when it’s rainy, as opposed to a 22% success rate when the sun’s out.”  
“that’s interesting, spencer. were you planning on asking for my number?” sara asks jokingly. spencer flushes at the question, stammering a defense. “just kidding. you sure do know a lot of stuff, don’t you?” 

“sure,” he says with a bite of his lip. “i have three phds. what i don’t know, though, is where you went when you left vegas. or why you left vegas. or…”

“or why i didn’t tell you i was leaving?” sara finishes for him. he gives a small nod, embarrassed to admit how much it affected him, and sara frowns. she lays the palm of her hand against his face, rubbing her thumb against his cheekbone. spencer’s taken aback by the affectionate action, but leans into her touch anyways. sara holds that position for a minute, surveying his features. she’s not ready to tell him the story, honestly. it’s humiliating. save from the fact that her mom essentially ruined his parents’ marriage; she didn’t know the nature of spencer’s relationship with his father now. for all she knows, it’d done a complete 180 in the past 20 years, and she’d ruin everything with her anecdote. no, she couldn’t risk this. spencer looked too pretty under the moonlight, was too nice to her tonight.

“would you be mad if i didn’t want to talk about that yet?” she asks, tracing her finger down the bridge of his nose. spencer feels a little relieved by this. he’s prepared for that conversation to be a heavy one, prepared for her to say she left because of him. because he wasn’t good enough for her. he doesn’t think he can handle that confirmation tonight, so he welcomes the change in subject. 

“can we just...start over?” spencer says. 

sara nods. “hi, i’m sara,” she holds her hand out to shake, finally removing it from against his face. spencer takes it with a small smile. 

“i’m spencer,” he replies. they sit in silence for a while, watching the stars. the moment is long, but it feels like they’re suspended in time. like the cars and people underneath them have come to a standstill. spencer reckons sara’s always had that effect on him, but the hustle of the city disappearing around him makes it much more pronounced. spencer steals a quick glance at her. she looks so serene. he wonders if she’s thinking as much as he is, or if she’s simply appreciating the city sounds and night air. 

“are you thinking as much as i am?” sara pipes up, breaking the silence. 

spencer shakes his head incredulously with a chuckle. “you took the words right out of my mouth.” 

sara turns to face him, pulling her knees to her chest. “tell me a story. like you used to.” when spencer’s gaze meets hers, sara’s hand moves to tuck a piece of his hair behind his ear, the movement nearly involuntary. there’s a low rumble of thunder, but it sounds far away. 

“okay,” spencer says, neither one of them breaking eye contact. he remembers her eyes being a much more vibrant blue, but he likes the true hue better. and whenever she thought of him, sara had always imagined glasses, like when he was a child, but being able to see his face clearly is so much better. 

“actually,” sara starts. she finishes her statement by pressing her lips against spencer’s firmly. he threads his hands through her hair and pulls her closer to him, letting out a soft moan. the kiss is passionate, but not lustful. it’s gentle and full of energy. sara nips at spencer’s bottom lip. he tastes like sangria. his hand travels to the side of her face, thumb rubbing against her cheek slowly. he kisses her like she's oxygen and he’s never had a breath of fresh air in his life. 

after a minute, sara pulls away slowly, resting her forehead on his. “okay, now you can tell me a story.” 

spencer presses another chaste kiss to the corner of her mouth. “how do you expect me to remember anything right now?” 

sara grins, pulling away from their intimate position and turning to face the stars. “i can wait. i’ve got all night.” 

  
  



	3. illicit affairs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "you taught me a secret language you know i can't speak with anyone else."

“so you speak how many languages?” 

“a lot.” 

sara hums, and crawls into spencer’s lap. they’re sat on the floor of his apartment, the party from earlier in the night long forgotten, the footsteps of spencer’s teammates long receded. they’re surrounded by pillows and blankets that sara had shamelessly tornado’d around spencer’s apartment to find. she’s hung them over the couch, over the tv. it’s a fort. 

the only light source is the flickering of a nature documentary playing in the background, volume turned all the way down. a lion meets a gazelle onscreen. 

sara presses her lips to spencer’s neck for what feels like the hundredth time that night. “teach me,” she mumbles, sinking her teeth into his supple skin in a gentle bite. 

spencer shakes his head. “ Я вас любил: любовь ещё, быть может,” he says softly. 

“ooh, russian,” sara replies, taking her complete lack of understanding in stride. “what does that mean?” she kisses down to his exposed clavicle, sucking a tiny mark against it. it’s miniscule compared to the other crimson spots littering his neck and chest. 

again, spencer shakes his head. “i’m not telling you,” he says, stifling a moan. sara lays her head against his shoulder and looks up at him with a bat of her thick eyelashes, totally teasing him. when he looks down at her, completely immune to her tricks, she purses her lips into a joking scowl and pokes one of his hickeys with her index finger. he winces and jerks away from her touch. 

they’re both silent, soaking in the romantic moment. with her head against spencer’s bare chest, and his hands in her hair, sara focuses her attention on the interaction between the gazelle and the lion. spencer’s breathing is steady under her, and she knows he’s got his eyes trained on her, just as content as she is.  _ the lion should eat the gazelle, _ she thinks.  _ why isn’t the lion eating the gazelle? _

“sara,” spencer says to get her attention. she looks up at him and her mouth forms an involuntary grin at the sight of him. his lips are swollen, his eyes are glazed over, his hair is messy. she’s ruined his perfect little pretty boy face, and she all she had to do was kiss him. 

a lot. 

she kissed him a lot.

spencer is tender, completely vulnerable to her. he’s the gazelle, she realizes, and her face falls a bit. does that make her the lion? will she inevitably eat him? 

“you can spend the night,” he says quietly, like he’d been pondering it for a while. “if you want,” he adds quickly. “no pressure.” 

“i’ll stay,” sara replies immediately, then holds a finger up in warning. “but i never put out on the first date.” 

spencer shifts uncomfortably, and sara’s suddenly aware of her position perched on his lap. she scrambles to get off of him, and he stretches his legs out next to her. “this was a date?” he asks with a shy smile, leaning back on his hands. 

“of course it was, dr. reid,” she says, using the honorific in jest. amidst their prolonged make-out session, the pair had found some time to catch up on the past twenty years (and to catch their breath). spencer had asked sara many questions about her job, how she met penelope and how the hell she ended up in dc, but sara thought spencer’s life had been far more interesting. she knew spencer was smart. he’d been teaching her complex prose before she could hardly even read silently in her head, for crying out loud. but  _ three _ phds? sounds impossible to sara. she wanted to listen to him talk about everything, all day. 

she’s endeared by the way he drops facts in conversation, just as he did when he was a child. she’s endeared by the way he runs his tongue over his bottom lip, but she doesn’t think she’d ever noticed that before. she’s endeared by the way his hands run all over her, like he missed her, even though she knows that he probably hardly remembered her after twenty years. she knows she hardly remembered him. 

more than just wanting to catch up with an old friend, sara had found herself utterly entranced by spencer. and that was going to be a problem, sara knows, because neither one of them had spoken about their childhood yet, and she isn’t quite keen to divulge the information that she knows. god, spencer’s dad fucking sucks.

sara doesn’t  _ want  _ to be the lion, and she doesn’t  _ want  _ to be closed off to spencer...but that seems like the only option for her right now. but she’s getting ahead of herself. it’s her first night with spencer. and while she  _ thinks  _ it’s going well, he could just be a really good actor. but the adoration in his eyes when he looks at her....

spencer seems to notice the wheels turning in sara’s head, and lifts her chin into a gentle kiss. “i’m really glad you’re here,” he says sincerely, and sara melts, every worry and insecurity on her mind floating out of her brain and into the vents of his apartment, where the AC unit carries them away.

when they finally decide to migrate from spencer’s living room floor to his bed, they lay on their sides, facing each other. sara’s wearing spencer’s old caltech t-shirt and nothing else, yet she’s never felt less exposed. she’s safe with him, she knows. 

spencer lets his eyes trace her features, from the curve of her nose across her cheeks. he meant it wholeheartedly, that he’s glad she’s here in his typically lonely apartment. this was better than anything he could have fabricated in his mind.  _ sara  _ is better than anything he could have fabricated in his mind. he senses some hesitation in her, but he knows he’s all in. he hopes she feels the same. is that naive of him? sure, he thinks, but there is just something so alluring about the girl in front of him that he throws all caution to the wind. 

they had talked and kissed and been generally giddy around each other so much that the pair was exhausted. spencer’s eyes are heavy, but he desperately wants to make his feelings even clearer to sara. “if you stayed every night like this, i wouldn’t mind,” he murmurs, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear. 

sara turns to snuggle against his chest, pulling his arms around her. spencer’s heart grows three sizes. “mm, you’re cute, baby,” she replies, hardly loud enough to be heard over the hum of the ceiling fan whirring. but he hears her. baby, she said. baby, baby, baby. he presses his lips to the top of her head, and drifts to sleep before he can internalize the pure sweetness of the nickname. 

\--------------

“dr. reid, you’re a fucking vampire,” sara says plainly.

“i am? you are!” he exclaims in response. 

they’re standing side by side in spencer’s bathroom, fluorescent light highlighting the patterned bruising littering each of their necks. spencer makes eye contact with sara through the mirror, and they laugh. 

“i’m gonna get picked on at work so much today,” spencer remarks with a pout, and sara traces her finger along the curve of his spine. 

“just tell them you got attacked by a spider, or something,” she says. 

“they wouldn’t buy it. did you know that most humans never even have a reaction to a spider bite? the amount of venom a spider has is miniscule compared to the size of our bodies.” 

“well…you could just tell them the truth? that i spent the night?” sara swings herself up onto the counter, perching herself next to the sink. she kicks her legs out and wraps them around spencer’s hips, pulling him toward her. 

“mmm,” he replies skeptically, and sara captures his lips in a kiss before he can say anything else. 

when they pull apart, sara presses her forehead against his. “i know you don’t want to mix work and play, spence, but i’m  _ definitely  _ telling penelope.” she punctuates her words with a goofy grin and a kiss against the tip of his nose.

when spencer saunters into work an hour later, purple scarf wrapped around his neck, beat-up satchel gripped tightly in his hands. he feels like everyone is looking at him, but there’s only one set of intent eyes on him. penelope. he catches her gaze, and feeling emboldened by his past night and morning, he shoots her an exaggerated wink. penelope bursts into shrieking laughter that fills him with warmth and rings in his ears for the rest of the day. 

  
  



End file.
